Student podcast – urban positions and practices – Billboards

work from a course I recently coordinated for Monash Masters of Urban Planning and Design and Masters of Architecture students. A new course Called Urban Positions and Practices, this was essentially urban history and theory, focused on critically interpreting the role of professionals like architects and planners. I structured it around a series of 12 ‘things’: fence, pipe, pig, garden, house, plan, pub, tower, street, person, car park and pylon. One assessment task was group story telling– AKA critical audio, or basically, podcasting. In groups of 3-4, students researched, recorded, and edited a roughly 15-minute audio story on the theme of “the past is present” – connecting planning history to a contemporary urban feature. Students picked their own topics and the podcasts had to have 3 parts –scripted part, conversational, and something else. This was a research task but also about learning an unfamiliar medium. I’m sharing a few partly to draw attention to our students and the Monash UPD course. Also, to illustrate podcasting as a learning tool. And hopefully they’re just interesting. I’ve picked 4 student podcasts to share – the topics are ‘dogs’, ‘park benches’, ‘playgrounds’ and ‘billboards’. This final, fourth one, is ‘Billboards with Haruna, Ryall, and John. Join them discussing the history, impact and ubiquity of billboards and advertising space in cities. Listen to some children try to make sense of an ad for Bumble. Small correction here – what the first semester students missed here was the specific planning regulations around advertising signage of different types, sizes, illumination and so on. For the pedants amongst you, these are set out in the Victoria Planning Provisions at 52.05 ‘signs’. For everyone else, enjoy the podcast.